Organ Transplants

After a month on the waiting list for the Heart in a Box trial at IU Methodist Hospital, Steve Gilland of Corydon was the first person in the state to receive a donor heart transported in a device that keeps it beating the entire way.

“It allows us to transport the organ in basically a working mode," Wang says, "as if it were still inside the body," says Dr. I-Wen Wang, a cardiothoracic surgeon. "In this case, the heart is profused by the donor’s blood. The heart’s actually beating – contracting the entire time until it gets to our hospital."

Dick Teresi wanted to write about how science determines the point between life and death. After a decade of research, Teresi says he still doesn't know what death is, but that the breadth of his ignorance has been widely expanded. Teresi's findings have been published in his new book, The Undead: Organ Harvesting, the Ice-Water Test, Beating Heart Cadavers — How Medicine Is Blurring the Line Between Life and Death.